


Falling Back into Metre

by Lokei



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: One False Step, Gen, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-31
Updated: 2008-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-19 05:00:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/197171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lokei/pseuds/Lokei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SG-1 finds ways to get back into step after the Planet of the Singing Plants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling Back into Metre

The phone rang. Jack contemplated letting it ring—it had to be at least 1 AM by now, or later, and he’d only been home from aftermath of the godforsaken planet of the weird singing plants and weirder white bald naked people for twenty minutes or so. He wasn’t sure how long a day must be on said weird singing plant planet—they’d hiked the ten miles to and from the gate at least three times—six hours each way—before the sun finally set on them on the way back to the gate on the last leg. Daniel had pointed out that Abydos had a 36 hour day—this one was apparently even longer, and now Jack was pretty much positive he’d been up, walking, and griping about it, for about 48 hours straight. Color him entirely unimpressed then with whoever it was that was calling in the middle of the goddamn night.

Except, there were really only two people who would be calling Jack at this hour: the duty officer, because there was some emergency that only the currently-walking-dead-O’Neill could deal with, or Daniel.

One of those was distinctly more likely than the other. Jack picked up the phone.

“O’Neill.”

“Talk to me about planes.”

“Daniel.” Score one for knowing his team. “Didn’t we already do this?” A fragmentary, awkward moment in the infirmary. _‘You know I’…’Yeah, and you know’…’yeah. It wasn’t’…_ Not all that hot, as apologies went, and not a single female of Jack’s long and varied acquaintance would have accepted it as one. But he had thought it worked for Daniel.

“Yeah. But talk to me about them anyway. Your favorite things about flying.” Daniel’s voice cajoled him through the earpiece and Jack held back a sigh. This was Daniel’s way of apologizing for the ‘ignorant and condescending’ remark, he was pretty sure, asking Jack to talk about something in which Daniel himself was ignorant. It was an elegant solution. Jack was sorry he hadn’t thought of it first, but then, with Daniel around, he rarely got to be the first at bat in the thinking department. There was something wrong with that metaphor, but he was too tired to figure it out.

“Okay, Daniel,” Jack resigned himself to taking the phone to bed and talking his linguist to sleep. There were worse ways to spend an evening, and even if he hadn’t gotten to fly in a while, the hunger, the memory of exhilaration, were always there. Jack settled himself back against the pillows and let the words flow, while the slow and steady beat of their understanding wove its way across the phone line, un-vocalized but not unheard, like the deep and vital tones of an alien world.

= = =

There were days Sam was absolutely positive she was never going to understand ‘her boys.’ She knew, beyond reason or doubt, that she was on the best team at the SGC, a vital cog in the most important endeavor of human history, placed in situations that could determine the course of events for lives across the galaxy. She knew equally well that Daniel, Teal’c, and the Colonel had that same bone-deep sense of adventure mixed with responsibility. There were days she knew she stood in the company of some of the finest minds and hearts humanity had to offer.

And then there were days she turned up in her lab to find a singing daisy alarm clock on her desk, courtesy of the Colonel, and, she suspected, Daniel.

It was getting to be a somewhat alarming trend that when the Colonel had a joke he wanted to pull and wanted also to get off the hook for doing it, he’d involve Daniel, just because no one with a pulse within miles of a certain archaeologist could hold a grudge against him. Warily, Sam crossed the lab and managed not to jump in the air when she discovered that the alarm clock apparently had been MacGyvered to respond to motion or proximity and was now squawking something cheerful and annoying about ‘daisy heads’ once she was within five feet of it. Sam shook her head at the sensor which had been apparently pirated from one of those irritating garden statue things like you could find at a nature store, disconnected it, and prayed that no one would ever see fit to allow Jack O’Neill to rewire a DHD. They’d probably end up gating to Timbuktu. Granted, there wasn’t a stargate there to her knowledge, but the Colonel would find a way to manage it, Sam was pretty sure.

Underneath it was a note in the Colonel’s distinctive sprawl.

 _An addition to your plant collection--for when you want one of them to talk back. J &D_

Sam chuckled, put the stupid plastic menace next to her computer, and tucked the note in her pocket. The more she thought about it, the more she thought it was a good bet Daniel knew nothing about this, this time. She’d have to see if she could corner him sometime this morning, preferably before she ran into the Colonel. If he was as innocent as she hoped, together the two scientists could probably come up with suitable retribution.

= = =

Curled around his third cup of coffee for the morning, Daniel was somewhat blearily considering how to phrase his report on the cultural levels of the people on the planet yesterday. He hadn’t exactly enjoyed being forced to acknowledge Jack’s precipitate and prejudiced summation of an entire race as ‘less evolved than us’ as relatively accurate. Daniel wasn’t sure, after all, if it was true, since they’d only seen the culture in an altered state due to the whole we-crashed-into-your-symbiotic-plant thing. What was that theory Sam was always nattering on about in physics, the one that really did actually have a parallel to anthropology and the effect of an outside observer on a reaction or process? The observer effect—for Sam it was Heisenberg and Schrodinger, for Daniel it was Hawthorne.

Daniel also wasn’t sure if his irritation was entirely due to the whole bad-sound issue, either. There were days Jack WAS condescending, though ignorant had been over the line. Jack played dumb but wasn’t, which Daniel knew perfectly well. The dumb act got pretty annoying when Daniel was trying to make a point, admittedly, but usually he didn’t mind letting it slide. Belittling things which didn’t fit a middle-class American military viewpoint, however, was annoying no matter who did it, even Jack.

Even so, after last night’s phone call, he felt better. Even knowing they’d basically fixed their mistake, and no one had died, Daniel had been on edge. He had done a miserable job of apologizing to Jack in the infirmary—and was horribly embarrassed about the hopping thing, which he was certain Jack would save for ammunition later—and was this morning mutely appreciative of the fact that Jack hadn’t made a stink over his second apology attempt.

Which meant that the morning briefing would, hopefully, not be entirely unbearable, even though Daniel was pretty sure he’d fallen asleep while still on the phone.

Setting his coffee down on the desk, eyes already on the pile which had magically appeared in the time he’d been gone of other stuff which was marked ‘urgent’ and ‘please review,’ Daniel dropped into his chair.

“Ouch!”

And suddenly he was vertical again, rubbing his offended posterior and glaring at the foreign object someone had left on his seat.

He blinked.

His lips twitched.

And then he was laughing.

He had sat on a really, really big bottle of aspirin, to which was affixed a big red bow and a tag that read, “Mine’s even bigger. J.”

“Classy, O’Neill.” Still chuckling, Daniel hefted the bottle of apology-aspirin in one hand and gave his rear one more pat before sitting down—gingerly—to check his email. He put it on top of his monitor where Jack would be sure to see it when he dropped by for his morning bug-Daniel session, and got to work.

= = =

Teal’c observed his teammates with growing satisfaction as they arrived together to the briefing room. Captain Carter was saying something about ‘a menace to electrodes,’ and indicating O’Neill with an exaggerated jerk of the head. Daniel Jackson was covering what Teal’c believed would be described as a ‘smirk’ behind his coffee cup and O’Neill himself was watching his ‘kids’ with a tolerant smile that spoke eloquently for his sense of well-being. It was pleasing to see that the difficulties which were exacerbated by the unfortunate side-effects of the planet were no longer a concern. Teal’c met the gaze of General Hammond, as one former leader of men to another, and nodded slightly. Once more, SG-1 walked in step.

General Hammond returned his salute, and placed his files upon the table. “Let’s get started, shall we, folks?”


End file.
